TUAW TV Live: Special Apple Fall Event Episode

Dear Aunt TUAW: What's in Apple's guitar hole?

Maybe I'm completely wrong, but I eventually demystified the Apple 9/1/2010 Press Invitation. I had a look at the press release image I found on www.fscklog.com (it's a little bigger than yours) in Photoshop.

Instinctively the soundhole was very interesting to me, especially the "barely lit" part underneath the strings, where you can see the inside of the guitar back. Classic guitars typically have a label of the guitar maker there and in the image you can barely see something that could be a label.

I found it very interesting that the Apple creative crew was so picky in such a detail, so this again pulled my attraction. Of course, it would simply look odd, if you couldn't see anything of the guitar's inside from a front shot like this, so maybe there's nothing special about it. I then inverted the image in Photoshop and there was a "label" clearly visible.

The label "edges" were not orthogonal but tilted towards each other on the side of the neck. If you then rotate the image 90 degrees clockwise, this reminded me to be the upper part of a stretched "V." I used the path tool in Photoshop to extend the tilted lines of the label and they almost perfectly show a stretched V, at least to me.

After rotating the image, the "T" became also clearly visible to me. It is the bridge and the attached strings. So I found the "TV", but was still missing the "i" like in "iTV". I got back to the Apple Logo soundhole, which then seemed to me to be the point of the glyph "i". If this was true, then visible part of the neck seems to be the line of the glyph "i". Putting it all together, I think I demystified the image which really hints at "iTV". If you are interested, I will send you the press release image (with layers) where I highlighted the "iTV" letters.

As I said in the beginning of my tip, I may be completely wrong, but if the new Apple TV will be announced next Wednesday and it will officially be called iTV, this will prove me right.

Best regards from Germany,

Your nephew, Claudio

Dear Claudio,

There certainly is something in that hole, but it could be as simple as giving the invitation a little background texture rather than leaving the hole completely dark. It doesn't really look to these weak, watery, and aging eyes like the letters you are suggesting. As Uncle Chris rather sarcastically points out, if you zoom in on the guitar strings 1000x, then rearrange the pixels in a double-blind shuffled inverse algorithm, they spell out, "JFK 1963 ROSWELL 1947 OMFG", which proves JFK was assassinated by space aliens from Zeta Reticuli 2!

Unfortunately, there's no concrete evidence on the ground that the whole Apple TV refresh and rename-to-iTV is going to happen, although Auntie would be delighted if it did. Bets on a new iPod introduction, and maybe new iTunes features seem more in line with historic September events, as well as the cryptic invitation.

But Auntie tries not to be prejudiced here. She's going to turn this question over to all her nieces and nephews and ask them what they see in that hole. The comments section is open. Fire away.